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Learn From the Expert
Avoid the Search Engine Cops
Updated July 8, 2003
According to John Heard of Planet
Ocean, search engines have been increasing their tracking
of site submissions. Over the last few years we have
seen some search engines put a "cap" on the
number of submissions received per day per IP address.
We have also seen AltaVista change their submission
service to a "ransom note" submit to block
all automated submissions.
This article will not teach you how
to avoid the search engine cops so you can freely spam
all you want. Rather, it will teach you what you need
to do in order not to fall into the wide trap that has
been laid to catch all of the spammers out there.
First of all, our advice has always
been not to submit your site to any free search engine.
None. Why? Search engines are very sophisticated today
and crawl the web very aggressively. If you have done
your marketing correctly and have achieved solid link
popularity early on, the spiders will find your site
on their own.
If you do wish to manually submit
your site to the search engines, you should understand
that the search engines will use any one of the following
to track you:
Cookies on your browser
Your IP address
Your email address
Frequency of pages submitted from each domain
Cookies
"Cookies" are text files
written to your hard drive by a web server as your surf
the web. Cookies are mostly used to either keep track
of your personal preferences on a site or to track your
"habits" online for advertisers.
Cookies can contain many different
variables, such as time, date, your IP address, unique
user ID's, session variables, and even your email address.
Shopping carts are build on the principle
of Cookies and tracking. Without Cookies, online shopping
would be an impossibility.
Many search engines often use cookies
to render a personalized start page, serving banner
ads that would interest you based on your profile, and
web page submission activity. If you do a lot of submitting,
the search engine can use the Cookie information to
track you, and if you could fall into the "spammer"
definition, even if you have done nothing to violate
their Terms of Use.
If you are a professional search
engine optimizer, one of your jobs is to make sure your
client's pages are listed in the search engines. If
you perform dozens of searches per day, you could be
labeled a "spammer" even though you are in
compliance with the Terms of Use.
By properly handling the Cookies
on your system, you will be better able to manage this
process correctly. John Heard recommends using two different
browsers, one for surfing the Internet, and the other
submitting to the search engines. For example, you could
use Internet Explorer for surfing and Netscape Navigator
for submitting to search engines. This way, you could
disable your Cookies in Netscape, thus freely allowing
you to perform your duties without being tracked.
Your IP Address
The search engines can also track
you by the IP address you are using to connect to the
Internet. If you use a dialup service, or your setting
are that you do not have a static IP, then you should
frequently disconnect and reconnect during your submission
sessions. Doing so will deliver a different IP number
each time and make you look more like multiple users.
Your Email Address
Do not use the same email address
for each submission. Make sure that you use the domain
email that is being submitted (i.e. info@domainname.com).
Frequency of pages submitted
from each domain
If you are going to submit multiple
pages per day per domain, we recommend that you limit
your submissions to five per day. Most search engines
will accept more, but according to our testing, this
is sound advice as you will not raise any "red
flags".
Summary of Tips
Do not submit your pages, let the
search engines find them on their own.
If you must submit your pages, manually
submit them.
Clear unwanted Cookies from your
browser. We recommend at least once a week.
Be sure your IP address changes
regularly.
Use a different email address for
each submitted domain.
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